Unemployment rate to average out at 3.3 per cent in 2017

KUCHING: The current Malaysian unemployment rate at 3.4 per cent will further average out at 3.3 per cent in 2017.

According to the research arm of MIDF Amanah Investment Bank Bhd ( MIDF Research) in an economic brief, 25,000 jobs had been added in May, allowing Malaysia’s employment and labour force to expand to 14.45 and 15.0 million people respectively.

Year on year ( y- o- y), this translates to a 1.8 and 1.7 per cent growth in employment and labour force.

This expansion caused the number of unemployed persons to go down to 508,000 in May – the lowest number seen in 11 months.

This improving trend of our unemployment was also mirrored in a global scale as unemployment rates across major and emerging economic were all seen to have fallen to lower levels.

Australia saw its lowest rate since the year at 5.5 per cent; US at 4.3 per cent; South Korea at 3.6 per cent; and Europe maintained its 9.3 per cent from the previous month.

Explaining the improvement in our labour market, the research arm said, “Overall, we noticed strengthening trends in the labour market since early of this year matching the pick-up in economic growth.

“We believe the improvement in the labour market is due to continuous improvement in the external trade activities and steady pace in domestic demand.

“Therefore, we are in the opinion that stout demand from both global and domestic have pushed up employment via increase in output production in May 2017.”

To recap, in May, export growth was seen to have risen by 32.5 per cent y- o-y, distributive trade expanded by 10.7 per cent y- o-y, and industrial production rose by 4.6 per cent y- o-y.

With that being said, the research arm is expecting both domestic and global economic activities sot continue on their upward trajectory and forecasts the unemployment rate to average out at 3.3 per cent for the year as more job creation is seen in our export orientated industries.

Data from Monster.com – an online job search database – suggested the industries with the most employment growth moving forward would likely be the oil and gas (O&G) industry as it job posting activities have expanded significantly in May.